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Latest Zogby poll shows 85% of troops think they are in Iraq because of a Saddam/September 11 connection

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| Tue Feb. 28, 2006 11:43 AM PST

The lastest LeMoyne College/Zogby poll, released today, is filled with interesting--and in some cases, alarming--information concerning the attitudes of U.S. troops toward the war they are fighting in Iraq. 72% of those responding to the poll said that the U.S. should leave Iraq within the next year, and about 25% said the U.S. should leave Iraq immediately. When asked why some Americans favor immediate troop withdrawal, the breakdown looked like this:

15%--Those Americans do not understand the need for our troops to be in Iraq

16%--Those Americans do not approve of the use of troops in a pre-emptive war

20$--Those Americans do not believe that the continued presence of U.S. troops will accomplish anything

37%--Those Americans are unpatriotic

58% of those serving said the Iraq mission is clear in their minds; 42% said it was somewhat unclear or very unclear to them. 85% said the U.S. is in Iraq to retaliate for Saddam Hussein's role in the September 11 attacks, and 77% said they also believe a major goal of the war is to prevent Saddam from protecting al Qaeda.

Interestingly, 93% of respondents said that the removal of weapons of mass destruction was not a reason for the military presence of the U.S. in Iraq. Also, 80% of the troops responding to the poll said that they did not have a negative view of Iraqis because of attacks by insurgents. 80% were opposed to the use of banned weapons, and 55% said that it is not appropriate to use harsh interrogation methods against insurgents.

Only 30% believe that the Department of Defense failed to provide adequate protection for them.

The survey included 934 respondents interviewed at undisclosed locations throughout Iraq

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House Rules Committee releases scathing report on the selling of America

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| Mon Feb. 27, 2006 4:08 PM PST

Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York, ranking member of the House Rules Committee, was on Air America Radio today to discuss the report released last week by her committee--"America For Sale--The Cost of Republican Corruption." Congresswoman Slaughter talked about Medicare, the disputed Halliburton money that has been returned to Halliburton, and the failure of contractors to provide safety for American troops in Iraq.

From the report's executive summary:

The most important thing to know about Washington these days is the following statistic: over the past ten years, the number of registered lobbyists in Washington has grown from around 10,000 to more than 34,000, while the fees that lobbyists charge their new clients have increased by as much as 100 percent. Today there are 63 registered lobbyists for each member of Congress.

The success of The K Street Project, according to the report, has led to "bizarre, outrageous stories that seem more at home in the pulp paperback thrillers of John Grisham or Carl Hiaasen than in the halls of Congress."

Though the new House Majority Leader, John Boehner, was chosen because he was considered farther removed from Rep. Tom DeLay than the acting Majority Leader and presumed frontrunner, Rep. Roy Blunt, Boehner is nevertheless closely tied to K Street. For all the talk of "reform," by electing Boehner, House Republicans have made it clear that they wish to protect and prolong the current system of government by lobbyists.

"America for Sale" goes into great detail on the sale of Medicare, energy security, homeland security, national defense, public health, jobs, and higher education corporate interests. It is not a pleasant read, but it should be a required one.

Can Civil War in Iraq Be Averted?

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| Mon Feb. 27, 2006 2:08 PM PST

"Analysts See the Lebanon-ization of Iraq in Crystal Ball," reports the Los Angeles Times. And USA Today peeks in the cupboard of possible things the U.S. could do to stave off a real civil war in Iraq—and finds it pretty much bare. The news today that Sunnis have agreed to join the political process again seems like a good development, but that doesn't mean reconciliation is in hand: according to the UN's outgoing human rights chief in Iraq, John Pace, even before the Samarra bombing, Shiite and Kurdish-backed death squads were torturing and executing hundreds of Iraqis every month in Baghdad alone.

Sunni leaders appear to be rattled by the violence in recent days enough to want to negotiate with the Iraqi government, but as Israelis and Palestinians have known for years, it only takes a few people who don't actually want peace for there not to be peace. The more militant Iraqi clerics such as Muqtada al-Sadr are gaining in influence by the day, drowning out saner and more moderate religious voices. Under the circumstances, it's no surprise that more and more analysts here in the United States are talking about withdrawal; because Iraq may continue to disintegrate regardless of whether the U.S. stays or goes. And in that case, as Suzanne Nossel says: "The only thing worse than Iraq as a failed state is Iraq as a failed state with 130,000 Americans living there."

Krugman on Inequality

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| Mon Feb. 27, 2006 12:55 PM PST

We've argued before against the notion that income inequality in America is simply due to the fact that some "lucky" set of workers has the skills and education to flourish in the "new" economy while another, less fortunate, set just doesn't. Now Paul Krugman argues along similar lines today:

The 2006 Economic Report of the President tells us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5 percent between 2000 and 2004. Over the longer stretch from 1975 to 2004 the average earnings of college graduates rose, but by less than 1 percent per year.
Even well-educated workers haven't necessarily been doing well in the "new" economy. But there has been economic growth over the past few decades. Lots of it. So who's receiving all the benefits? A "small oligarchy":

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National Security in the Polls

Fri Feb. 24, 2006 6:28 PM PST

President Bush has used "national security" as his signature issue since 9/11. The economy's down? Hey, don't forget we're fighting the war on terror. But for the first time in a long while, Americans have started saying that they trust the Democratic Party on national security issues more than they do the president, 43-41 percent. Considering that in 2004, Bush won partly because voters had more confidence in him than in John Kerry over the "war on terror," it's hard to dismiss these polls as significant.

Also, according to a new poll on the Dubai port deal, just 17 percent of Americans favor letting a Dubai operate U.S. ports, while a walloping 65 percent believe the sale should be prohibited. Where this will push Republican members of Congress, we don't know. But to remain in the good graces of the 65 percent of Americans who don't support the Dubai deal, it would seem wise to part ways with the president.

Feel-Good Story of the Day

Fri Feb. 24, 2006 5:37 PM PST

It's a departure from what we normally write about, but this story is too heartwarming not to link to.

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Avian Flu Spreads to Africa

Fri Feb. 24, 2006 5:35 PM PST

The WHO recently confirmed that the avian flue had migrated to Africa, and called on countries in the region to take emergency measures to prevent the flu's spread outside of Nigeria. The continent, which is dependent on backyard poultry, can hardly afford the onset of avian flue, and there is no infrastructure to deal with the problem. Veterinary care is meager, barefooted children play with sick poultry, testing is limited and backyard chickens have access to wild birds, increasing the risk of contamination. It's an uphill battle to convince African farmers to kill their chickens, and according to the chairman of Nigeria's local poultry farmers association, Alhaji Aruna , farmers are more likely hide their poultry and turn to the black market than quarantine their animals.

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More Iraqi Journalists Targeted

Thu Feb. 23, 2006 1:29 PM PST

Three Iraqi journalists were found dead today in a remote area north of Bagdad. One of the victims, Atwar Bahjat, was a prominent reporter for Al-Arabiya television, and was the seventh woman journalist killed since the beginning of the Iraq war. She and two colleagues were reporting live from the edge of Samarra, on the bombing at the Shiite shrine when two gunmen approached screaming, "We want the correspondent!" The three were kidnapped, and their bodies found bullet ridden and abandoned six miles north of where they were originally abducted.

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Action on Darfur? Not likely.

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| Thu Feb. 23, 2006 12:22 PM PST

President Bush recently called for a "doubling" of peacekeeping forces in Darfur, as well as NATO intervention, to stop the ongoing genocide there. But it's not at all clear where the troops are going to come from—Bush administration officials have ruled out sending U.S. troops, and Europe has certainly shown no real interest in sending its people to fight in Africa. (Darfur isn't really an issue among civil society groups in most European countries, apart from Britain, sort of, and there's no real pressure to act.)

The guess is that nothing will come of Bush's proposal. When pressed for specifics, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack recently said: "It's really premature to speculate about what the needs would be in terms of logistics, in terms of airlift, in terms of actual troops. And certainly in that regard, premature to speculate on what the US contribution might be." Oh? Pray tell, when won't it be premature to speculate? A year from now? Two years? When everybody's dead?

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The Broader Port Security Problem

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| Thu Feb. 23, 2006 11:48 AM PST

The New York Times has a good article today on how the question of whether a Dubai-controlled company is allowed to operate a few ports or not is really the least of our port security issues:

The administration's core problem at the ports, most experts agree, is how long it has taken for the federal government to set and enforce new security standards — and to provide the technology to look inside millions of containers that flow through them.

Only 4 percent or 5 percent of those containers are inspected. There is virtually no standard for how containers are sealed, or for certifying the identities of thousands of drivers who enter and leave the ports to pick them up. If a nuclear weapon is put inside a container — the real fear here — "it will probably happen when some truck driver is paid off to take a long lunch, before he even gets near a terminal," said Mr. Flynn, the ports security expert….

"I'm not worried about who is running the New York port," a senior inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency said, insisting he could not be named because the agency's work is considered confidential. "I'm worried about what arrives at the New York port." A while back Stephen Flynn, a former Coast Guard official who is now with the Council on Foreign Relations, had a longer piece in the Far Eastern Economic Review describing just how shaky port security is. Worth reading. And P.J. Crowley of the Center for American Progress did a short piece back in 2004 on how the administration just doesn't take this stuff very seriously at all: "Rather than increasing federal assistance in the face of new security requirements, the Bush administration's port security grant request is actually a huge reduction from the still inadequate total of $500 million allocated for port security in the first three years of the Bush administration."